The Summit - The Little Tournament That Could

The Little Tournament That Could

The Summit, and its inspiration the HomeStory Cup, in a way embody everything that is great about esports. Can you imagine any other form of professional competition where the best teams from all over the world fly into California and all stay in the same house for an entire week, both competing for a huge prize pool and simply enjoying themselves? The Summit provides us with something larger tournaments strive to achieve, but often fail in doing: the feeling of really getting to know our favorite teams and players.

Even if The Summit is portrayed as a small tournament, you can't ignore its sizeable prize pool. This year, so far, the community has managed to boost the prize pool from $100,000 to almost $270,000. So if any teams had been saving strategies throughout StarLadder and Red Bull Battle Grounds, this is the tournament where it's time for them to show their hand.

The Summit also has several interesting storylines. This week we will see EG play their first competitive game in nearly a month. Team Secret is coming off of a strong performance at Red Bull Battle Grounds where they narrowly managed to edge out another team at The Summit, Invictus Gaming, in the finals. You can bet on the fact that iG is hungry for an outright win this tournament after finishing in second place at two consecutive LANs. Lastly, you have VG, the other team responsible for the Cloud 9-esque placements from iG. After the StarLadder finals voices around the community were already crowning fy & co. as the TI5 champions. But after a surprising, and rather one-sided, 3-0 loss to Empire in the finals at D2CL last weekend one must ask if there is trouble brewing for the green machine.

Groupstage

The groupstage will use the GSL format which means that each group is a double elimination bracket without a grand finals. The two top teams advances.

Power Rank

1. Team Secret

Even though there were rumours about Secret not practicing for Red Bull Battle Grounds, no one can say that their performance in the finals was anything short of impressive. The team seems to have found their way of playing Dota now, which is why they top these rankings.

2. Vici Gaming

Vici, unlike Team Secret, turned in a very poor performance this past weekend. Empire successfully shut the Chinese powerhouse down 3-0 in the finals of D2CL. And even if Empire is a quality team, getting 3-0'd by any team is never a good sign. Hopefully this will be VG's inspiration to perform well in LA. But we still believe that Team Secret will be too big of a bite for them this week.

3. Cloud 9

"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" is pretty much the slogan for Cloud 9 these days, a team that has made a living off finishing second and third in tournaments. Last time we saw Cloud 9 on LAN they lost a very close series to Invictus Gaming at StarLadder XII. Jacky Mao and his boys will have to perform at the top of their abilities this weekend if they don't want to go home disappointed. But we feel like C9 has it in them to make their way to another third place.

4. Invictus Gaming

The number two comes to mind when discussing iG right now. Two weeks. Two tournaments. Two second place finishes. It must be frustrating playing for iG right now. You cannot complain about the quality of the team or the plays they have made (see: game two at Red Bull Battle Grounds vs. Team Secret). But we think this second place curse will end with The Summit. Unfortunately, we don't think it's going to be a happy ending. While it's completely possible they can give Cloud 9 a run for their money, we don't think they will be able to triumph over them in a Bo3.

5. LGD Gaming

LGD is a team that we are having a hard time placing. The last few months have been an endless roller coaster for the star-studded Chinese team. One week, they are able to beat the best, but the next week, they turn right around and drop games versus far lesser teams. This inconsistency combined with their lack of LAN appearances is what keeps them this low in the rankings.

6. Evil Geniuses

If you ask us, EG is truly the dark horse of this tournament. No one, outside of their scrim partners, can know where the boys in blue stand. EG has not played a competitive game in close to a month. In the current Dota 2 world, where we see the best in the world play on a daily basis, this is almost unheard of. As we have no way of telling their current form, and especially with a new balance patch bringing major changes to the game, we've decided to keep EG out of the top five.

7. Not Today

Not Today is the returning crowd favorites. Last year the team managed to make a big splash as the Dota 2 community as a whole decided to come together and give the MVP award to Freddy "SmAsH" Sina. Not Today got in through the American qualifier where they managed to take a game off EG. But that's as far as we think they'll go. In the groups, they will run into the brick wall that is Team Secret, LGD and iG. However, we'll all be hoping for an upset from the Peruvians!

8. Rave

When the invitees for TI5 were announced, Rave must have felt robbed. Many compendium owners figured that Rave was the team that deserved the SEA region invite to Seattle. Although that does not matter in The Summit, Rave must be excited to come to LA and compete with the best regardless of their invite status. It's certainly the best possible practise they can get for the extremely tough TI5 qualifiers. Unfortunately, we sincerely doubt that they will be able to take a single game off of VG, EG or C9.

I get being skeptical because they haven't played in a while, but outside of top 5 is weird for the team widely considered the 1st or 2nd best just a month or so ago.

I pull up the match lists for IG and LGD and don't really understand why you'd put them over EG just on a hunch that maybe EG turned to shit and no one knows yet. I can kind of get putting them 3rd or 4th, but IG and LGD above them, why? Because IG just got done losing, before which they just got done losing a bunch in China? LGD who has done what exactly in the last month besides lose notable games to IG, VG? They drew some series against t2 teams, and beat some t2 teams. It's really stretching to do justification for that beyond just ranking them based on hunches.

i dont think the PR is that bad. They aren't saying EG is bad or won't be competitive, it's just they're using recent results and EG has none because they haven't played. Empire beat VG, Secret beat IG, two scenarios most wouldn't have predicted prior to last weekend. Without having seen EG play lately, we don't know what kind of shape they're in, where we have a better understanding of how well the other teams are performing. I think most would assume EG will place better than top 6, but it doesn't negate the authors placement using their defined metric. They feel EG could come in and destroy the tournament (as the dark horse) but without having seen them play, they can't objectively place them higher than teams they've seen perform lately, which is reasonable.

I would probably rank:

ViciSecretLGDiGc9EGNot TodayRave

but rankings are kind of pointless to argue without super strict, clearly defined metrics. most ranking debates stem from people using different metrics (recent games, suspected head2head match-ups, results, speculative results) and mixing and matching everything in between and then arguing about it, lols.

I actually think it's impossible to do a power ranking with any degree of certainty right now. New patch, Empire just 4-1'd VG; while C9 has knocked Empire out of 3 LAN qualifiers IIRC. TS and C9 had very close games with iG lately, and TS has a new drafter. C9 hasn't beaten tier 1 Chinese teams in bo3 elimination matches in recent memory, but their play seems to be improving from LAN to LAN. No one knows how LGD will fare against Western opponents. EG hasn't played in forever, and lost to Empire and others at MLG. Lastly, since this is the TI patch, who knows what strats or heroes will be saved for TI5 groups (a la Skywrath/Razor at TI4).

Ranking the top6 teams is pretty tricky indeed. A bunch of these teams have faced each other very little in the last 5 months or so, and especially given how new the patch is I won't be really shocked no matter which teams from the top6 drop out in the groups. Though I still have a hard time seeing VG lose to both EG and c9 consecutively, but other than that it's hard to put clear favorites. This will be a very exciting tournament.

On May 13 2015 05:02 spudde123 wrote:Ranking the top6 teams is pretty tricky indeed. A bunch of these teams have faced each other very little in the last 5 months or so, and especially given how new the patch is I won't be really shocked no matter which teams from the top6 drop out in the groups. Though I still have a hard time seeing VG lose to both EG and c9 consecutively, but other than that it's hard to put clear favorites. This will be a very exciting tournament.

I don't think it's hard at all honestly1 VG2 Secret3 C94 EG (look I put EG here for their Time Off instead of in the gutter!)5 IG6 LGD7 Rave8 NoT Today (I want them to be 7th but they choke and play a lot worse than they do online at LANs)

On May 13 2015 05:12 Kraznaya wrote:forget the top 6 lets talk about how NOT is somehow ranked over RAVE

NoT is a team that non-americans keep questioning why we want to believe they will do well. They play amazing for long stretches online and cement themselves as 2nd best in the Americas, go to a LAN, and play a lot worse than normal. I think if NoT could somehow play at LANs like they do online they would even beat some Chinese at this LAN much less Rave.

Maybe we could give them 150 ping on LANs to try and get them comfortable, but I want to keep rooting for them that they'll eventually perform better offline.

don't forget, the bottom 4 don't even go to playoffs so there's no actual difference between 7-8, same for 5-6. And they don't get a chance to play each other either, so the chances of us having a definitive way to compare Rave vs NoT are near-0.

On May 13 2015 05:02 spudde123 wrote:Ranking the top6 teams is pretty tricky indeed. A bunch of these teams have faced each other very little in the last 5 months or so, and especially given how new the patch is I won't be really shocked no matter which teams from the top6 drop out in the groups. Though I still have a hard time seeing VG lose to both EG and c9 consecutively, but other than that it's hard to put clear favorites. This will be a very exciting tournament.

I don't think it's hard at all honestly1 VG2 Secret3 C94 EG (look I put EG here for their Time Off instead of in the gutter!)5 IG6 LGD7 Rave8 NoT Today (I want them to be 7th but they choke and play a lot worse than they do online at LANs)

Well can you provide good arguments for your ranking? It's easy to pull a ranking out of your ass that somewhat makes sense, but that's not very impressive unless you have solid arguments for it. What logic is there to place EG accurately? Why is c9 above iG? Why is Secret 2nd and iG 5th after SL12 and Redbull?

The reason I think it is difficult is that it is not possible to do a good ranking based on recent results, and it's also not possible to look at the gameplay and do a good ranking really when teams have so few proper matches played on the patch and EG hasn't even played at all. I feel one then has to resort to some random beliefs one has about the teams, which may or may not hold true at this point.